Knocking a single day off his jail term will mean much speedier rehabilitation for a convicted child pornography collector, his lawyer said Thursday.

Defence counsel Alain Hepner said after consulting with noted psychologist Dr. Patrick Baillie, it was determined a proposed two-year sentence for his client wouldn’t get him into counselling soon enough.

Hepner told provincial court Judge Anne Brown that the two-year term would delay getting Jonathan Michael Plecan into the Phoenix sex offender program.

He said a two-year sentence would be served in the federal penitentiary system, which only begins to move inmates towards the program once they’ve served a third of their sentence.

But in a provincial jail, Plecan could be moved into the treatment regime much more quickly.

“They have beds within the Phoenix program within six to eight weeks,” Hepner said.

“He could start that sex-offender treatment program almost immediately.”

The lawyer suggested Brown sentence Plecan, 67, to the maximum provincial jail term of two years, less a day, a proposal she accepted, but not before berating the offender for his conduct.

“By distributing child pornography you’re assuming a role that’s akin to a drug trafficker,” Brown said.

She noted Plecan possessed more than 40,000 images of “highly degrading, highly sexualized images of young children.”

And Brown said while the sentence was at the low end of the range for charges of distributing and accessing child porn on the Internet, it was justified in Plecan’s unique circumstance.

“I accept that it is in the appropriate range for a person of your age,” she said.

“It seems that you do understand, at this point, how damaging this behaviour is.”

On top of the jail term, Plecan will serve two years of probation during which he is not allowed to access the Internet, or use a computer.

He’s also barred from attending playgrounds, schools and other areas where children congregate for the next 20 years.